New Data Reveals How Marketers Use Social Media [INFOGRAPHIC]

In just a few hours, SEOmoz CEO Rand Fishkin and HubSpot CTO Dharmesh Shah will reveal the results from the SEOmoz annual industry survey on the state of SEO and internet marketing in their
joint webinar
at 1 p.m. EST.

The survey specifically aimed to highlight the state of search engine optimization, internet marketing, and the marketing profession in 2012, and SEOmoz shared this exclusive data with us in order to reveal some key insights about social media usage before the
official webinar
. So if you're wondering how marketers are leveraging social media for their businesses, we pulled together an infographic snapshot to feature some of results from the 6,491 survey respondents. Either scroll straight down to the infographic, or read through some additional analysis below.

How Marketers Are Using Social Media in 2012

The first statistic highlighted on our infographic reveals that
44.4% of survey respondents self-professed either “advanced” or “expert” level social media ability
. This shows that marketers are feeling an increased sense of ability to tackle what was once thought of as a new and unknown technology.

To little surprise in the social media marketing world,
Facebook and Twitter lead as the most popular social network
. In fact, our own
social media lead generation
team at HubSpot is big advocates for these two networks! What is surprising, however, is that
Google+ emerges as the third most popular network
. Google+ has historically been plagued with the "useless" label when it comes to generating social ROI, so one theory behind this ranking could be the high impact Google+ has on SEO.

While LinkedIn falls behind in fifth place, it turns out that
74.1% of marketers use LinkedIn for branding
. I found this to be particularly interesting since LinkedIn Company Pages do not provide many options
for
branding. While they can update their status and add a company logo, marketers don't have the more advanced branding capabilities that they have on more visual networks such as Facebook or Pinterest. One theory behind this statistic could be branding via employees. LinkedIn is an excellent platform for showing off the wonderful talent your employees bring to your company.

Lastly, it turns out that
60.2% of marketers are looking for analysis options, as well as other analytics options, in their social media management tools
. This comes as no surprise. When savvy social media marketers are communicating their messages online, they want to know exactly how those efforts are benefiting them by analyzing whether each social strategy is connecting to their end goal: revenue. Tools that report on
social media analytics
are becoming more and more in demand among marketers, which is exactly why the HubSpot team has worked so hard to provide reach metrics and CTR on all your social media messages, as well as ROI metrics like closed-loop reporting on leads and customers generated from social media, all within the
HubSpot Social Media tool
.

Nice infographic Anum. The Goolge+ adoption could be driven in part by the recognition of marketers of how Google+ is driving Google Local, Global Search and Google Maps from G+. G+ is less about social and more foundational to Internet marketing. The only question is when G+ takes the #2, then #1 spot. Blasphemy some will say! Impossible will say others. Remember that facebook was just a twinkle in Zuck's eye when My(Who?) dominated:-) Getting a Google+ business page is simple and all businesses large and small should take the time to build one. Thanks for sharing.

Where to get detailed information about Google + Audience segmented By Age Group, Industry/Culture and Geogrpahy too?

Steve Hopper

I would love to see this same infographic in the context of B2B marketing only (not including B2C). I've found that Facebook and Twitter aren't the best social media services for B2B. Let me know if that infographic is available. Thanks.

Yes, today social media is one of the powerful medium where, we should promote our product/services. It is really required for online marketers to analyze the visitor inflows in social media page to take action on them online marketing strategy

With all the focus on social media, it seems many company's are abandoning their own websites in favor of social media. Is this a trend that you've observed? Do you think it is a good ideea?

Anum Hussain

@Troy, I haven't specifically observed it but wouldn't suggest it. Your social media fans should ultimately end up on your website -- and there better be something there for them to continue to engage with your brand!

Anum

Sophie Montenegro

This survey not only shows how most marketers use social media for their businesses but somehow it gives one the idea on the probable effective sites to actually use if the aim is to have a bigger audience to showcase the product. Facebook, twitter and google+ might be the top three venues to have products launched. It is important to note that most people who use these platform prefer to have analytics in the social management tools they use.